Batman: TAS, episode #5: Feat of Clay, part 2

Part 2 starts out in solid noir fashion, with Bruce's grayscale mug shots reminding everyone of what's at stake here for our main character. This is the continuation of the subtle aspect of Clayface that I mentioned last time. However, once we're past that moment, the episode takes a pretty sharp turn away from that outdated quandary that I mentioned and jumps in with both feet on the super-powered fireworks. This version of Clayface is considerably more massive and powerful than the Clayface II of yore, who could make rudimentary shapes like this one, but not to the point where he was busting through walls or causing widespread destruction more like The Sandman of Marvel fame. This rather quickly results in the scenario that Batman, actual human in a superhuman world, runs into fairly often: Fighting a losing battle until he can use his wits to defeat his obviously superior opponent. This is pretty standard superhero fare and a good argument for The Batman's appeal over demigods like Superman, where writers would have to constantly ramp up the experience in order to provide some tension in a fight with the man who could do anything. To the writers' credit (Marv Wolfman is only on the story for this part, with Michael Reaves taking over scripting duties), they handle this fairly well, in that this is the far more exciting of the two episodes, even if it does end up being bog-standard comic book beatdown.

However, unlike Heart of Ice (which, at the moment, shall be the stick by which we measure most of what follows), the story pretty quickly descends to revolving solely around dealing with the super-powered menace. Daggett is present to be hoisted upon the public petard by a disguised Clayface and Bruce is let off the hook by the especially convenient deus ex machina of Clayface appearing as Bruce in front of some cops while he's losing control of his (new) bodily functions, but it's mostly about the punching and the exploding... which is fine. This is an adventure story, as most superhero stories are and the most exciting parts about Heart of Ice were when ice was blasting all over the place. Also, once again, we're reminded that a lot of the interest in Batman stories is generated by the strangeness of the opposition against The Batman's implacable will. That's part of this package, as well. But for a story that's ostensibly rooted in betrayal and vanity, we lose those elements pretty quickly. The one saving grace is the "I'm not dead yet!" moment at the end, where we discover that Hagen has actually escaped. However, a note about character.

I didn't really mention Germs in my post about part 1 because he wasn't nearly as important to the story as Bell was (the thug that The Batman was flying around the city with the Batwing.) It was clear that he was a germophobe when he used a handkerchief on doorknobs, but it seemed like an odd, even out-of-place, detail. His role was expanded in this episode and it became a minor part of the plot when arguing with Daggett about Germs' hesitation to enter a hospital. It became an even larger part of the plot when he ended up being interrogated by The Batman in an infectious disease closet(!) in that hospital. I'm trying to put aside the utter absurdity of that situation, but I just can't. Storing deadly diseases in a functioning hospital is- how shall we say? -somewhere between 'stupid' and 'insane', if not both, to say nothing of the fact that it was a closet that anyone (like a random thug on the run) could walk into, rather than a vault where such things are normally stored. So, with Germs, we went from minor and odd detail to interesting character element in the plot to an obviously totally staged situation where it seemed like they worked backward from a scenario they wanted and invented Germs in order to make it work. That, to me, is simply not sound storytelling. It's staged. It's clumsy. It's a pretty far cry from the care that was taken in the first three episodes. Ordinarily, you want your characters to have a bit more foundation besides "invented to make an absurd scene seem natural", especially when the premise of the scene really doesn't work at all.

That said, it's at least a more interesting scenario than flying someone over the city and dropping him from such a height that even landing in water will almost certainly be fatal. The tension created by the rocking specimen jar is good and the art direction, going from the queasy green of the infectious disease closet(!) to the glaring red sky as Clayface attempts to murder Germs is a good transition, as it ramps up the tension nicely. What follows is an interesting technical detail, when Clayface splatters on the ground but erupts with pseudopods and then emits sounds reminiscent of the creature in John Carpenter's version of The Thing. You wonder if some of these little tweaks were nods to sci-fi fans and a lot of them seem to be clearly intended. In contrast, you also occasionally wonder at their estimation of the intelligence of their audience, with The Batman adopting the worst disguise ever, cowl still fully visible under his maintenance man uniform, walking through a TV studio in use with people all around him. Scooby-Doo could have done better. He adopted a full disguise as a security guard in Heart of Ice. Why not here? On top of that, I confess to finding Teddy Lupus' loyalty to the misshapen monster that was his friend a little bizarre. Yes, you want to stand by your best friend and comfort him however you can. But he's also Ben Grimm after he got back from space. You can take a moment to be perturbed, since that's the point of him appearing like that for all of us.

It's worth mentioning some of the star power that came along with this episode, however, as it was apparent that people of note were already signing on to participate in the cool, new animated series. In addition to Ron Perlman (the Beast from "Beauty and") as Clayface, Ed Asner was the voice behind Daggett and Ed Begley, Jr. played Germs. Those names don't mean as much now, but they were serious stars back in the day. That said, it's safe to say that I was relatively unimpressed with this two-parter, overall. Every series is going to have its stronger and weaker episodes. It may have just been unfortunate that Feat of Clay came right after one of the best. But I think its flaws run a little deeper than that.

Next time, we're into something a bit more mundane than shapeshifting monsters, with It's Never Too Late.